Undocumented Migrants in the early 1970s Press
This information was mostly lifted from my 1971 master’s thesis.
For more than 40 years, undocumented migrants have been stealing jobs and helping create a trade deficit with Mexico.
The Los Angeles Times brought this to our attention in 1971 when an undocumented migrant was discovered working as a gardener at President Nixon’s Western White House.
The Times’ alarming story told readers, “The disclosure dramatizes not only the problem of security for President Nixon but also the substantial increase in the number of aliens illegally entering this country in recent months.”
Who knew that a single gardener presented a presidential security problem?
In the same story, it was reported that the American Federation of
Government Employees estimated that there were between 1. 5 and
2 million “illegals in the United States who cost the country
“billions of dollars to send them back.
Furthermore, these “illegals drain the nation’s finances by sending at least $500 million a year to their native countries, thus creating huge balance of payments deficits.’ Maybe a tariff was needed?
The supposedly liberal Times was on to a good story, editors apparently concluded.
Reporter Harry Bernstein did some digging.
His story described the vast profits being made by smugglers of aliens. He also claimed that there were between 200,000 and 300,000 undocumented Mexican workers, ••• commonly known as ‘Wetbacks … living in Los Angeles, “with far more coming in each day than are being caught and returned … Bernstein continued, “Even sympathetic Mexican Americans complain that the wetbacks are taking jobs from U.S. workers. Authorities estimate that up to $5 billion a year is earned by the illegal aliens, with $1. 5 of that going back to Mexico.”
Today’s sloppy reporting and slap-dash-wording have long roots.
Bernstein’s numbers are unattributed, making them just his assertion.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 